Well, I guess that is that, and we are left to wonder what might have been. A variety of financial factors led to the Five9 stakeholders rejecting Zoom’s bid and there are a lot of great articles covering all those moving pieces. I’ve had a number of clients reach out today and wanted to give a few quick points on what this “means” for both companies.
It was a very exciting announcement when we learned about the potential acquisition. Two market-leading innovators with a complementary fit as technology partners made it meaningful for our clients. We’ve been successfully helping our clients deploy both Zoom and Five9 for years both separately and together in successful multi-vendor environments. From my perspective, even though the financials killed the deal it’s still another huge and exciting signal in the market on how far the shift has gone. Zoom has pushed the innovation curve hard, and it was exciting to consider the possibilities of what that could mean for Five9’s roadmap, even though they have been an innovation leader for years. Zoom clearly recognized that the changing landscape of client experience was being led by providers like Five9, and they wanted in.
So, what’s next? Zoom will continue to drive its innovation with a focus on continuing to enhance the Zoom Phone offer with additional capabilities aimed at the lighter contact center use cases and will continue to deliver alongside partners like Five9 and others for the more complex or advanced use cases. Customers can still leverage the value of those partnerships but retain a little more of the freedom of choice of some of the other contact center partners such as NICE. There are merits to both the “single back to pat” and to the not “all your eggs in one basket” mentality. However, as we have seen more and more strategic focus on partnerships between these leading SaaS providers, going best of breed (to use another cliché while we are at it) can still offer a very well-integrated path with providers with a proven ability to partner well and deliver jointly. So, while we were pretty excited for what might have been, we don’t think this changes the trajectory of either company and it might help some of the other market leaders breathe a little sigh of relief.
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